Our Special Responsibility: to Actively Protect the Environment and Climate

As a maker of eco-friendly SWISS KRONO OSB products, we have a special obligation to help safeguard the environment and climate. In keeping with our corporate guidelines, in practical terms this means reducing dependency on fossil fuels in order to diminish carbon dioxide emissions. We also make a point of applying environmentally compatible processes to make all of our products.

We use wood – a natural raw material – and environmentally friendly binders to manufacture modern engineered wood products with an eco-friendly healthy profile. Environmental protection, business success and social responsibility are equally important to us.

We regard industrial productivity and environmental protection as the two sides of the same coin. This means placing state-of-the-art technology at the service of naturally healthy quality of life and exclusively making eco-friendly engineered wood products. Our processes are based on natural material cycles and energy flows. These economically and ecologically sustainable principles prove their worth in multiple ways. Both our customers and we ourselves benefit from this approach – as well as, ultimately, the environment.

Responsible Wood Production

A few years ago, we had the idea of growing the wood for our products ourselves. So we identified several well-suited sites and selected appropriate tree species for the project. Six years later, we were blessed with our first harvest. At one of sites, we planted a total of 26,400 seedlings that yielded more than 5,600 cubic metres of natural wood. This was then turned into 1,333 cubic metres of engineered wood containing over 1,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

SWISS KRONO Kft also promotes sustainable forestry by using thinnings from sustainably managed forests to make our products. We have also made a commitment to trying as hard as possible to avoid trading in and purchasing wood from inacceptable sources.

This includes, in particular, illegally harvested wood, wood from areas where traditional and/or basic civil rights are violated, wood from forests whose protective functions are endangered by exploitation, wood obtained by cutting down natural forests and replacing them with plantations or other non-silvicultural activities and wood from forests that have been planted with genetically altered tree species. You can find more information on the wood purchasing activities and services of SWISS KRONO Hungary at
Services/wood purchasing.

Carbon-Neutral, Resource-Saving Production

We strive to minimise the use of raw materials, water and energy; recycle wastewater, energy and heat; and burn production waste to additionally reduce our consumption of fossil fuels.

In line with our energy philosophy, we provide the information and resources that are essential for achieving our strategic and operational goals. We work day in, day out to improve our energy efficiency. Our investments to protect the environment also generate substantial economic benefits for us while securing jobs and driving our company’s ongoing success towards a bright future.

We produce our engineered wood materials in an almost completely climate-neutral manner, in other words by compensating for the associated unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions. At our production facility in Vásárosnamény, all production waste such as grinding dust and wood chips is converted into electric power in a special biomass-fuelled plant.

Eco-Friendly Building with Engineered Wood Products

We have learnt from experience that more and more investors, architects, merchants and builders are opting for trendsetting, eco-friendly, high-quality modern construction methods with wood-based materials. New architectural approaches are enabling attractive new solutions for forward-looking individuals who want to live in harmony with the environment.

Houses made of natural and engineered wood materials are healthy to live in and environmentally friendly. They also let their inhabitants enjoy a pleasant, comfortable ambiance. During manufacture of our products, the carbon contained in natural wood is locked in. As a result, less carbon dioxide (CO₂) makes its way into the atmosphere, doing so only if and when the wood burns or rots. Our plant outputs an average of about 336,500 cubic metres of OSB and ecoWALL each year, in which more than 315,000 tonnes of CO₂ is bound. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions helps protect the environment and enables everyone to lead a healthier life.

Sustainable Cascading Use

Wood is a valuable raw material that we should use conscientiously. The best example of efficient, sustainable use of the natural resource of wood is to successively employ it for different purposes. Also referred to as cascading or sequential use, this approach is good for the environment in every respect. It keeps raw materials and products in use for as long as possible. Thermal recycling, or burning to release its energy as heat, should only be applied at the very end of its lifecycle. Proceeding in this way not only makes the best possible use of wood, but also generates the greatest value.